


you'll be safe here

by ninemoons42



Series: Dragon Age Inquisition - Kiriya - Original Flavor [9]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Drinking & Talking, Established Relationship, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Flip, Watching Someone Sleep, unexpected free time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 09:50:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4824365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen finds himself with some unexpected free time on his hands, and then the Inquisitor comes back to Skyhold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll be safe here

**Author's Note:**

> Direct sequel to [northern hunter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4812101).

Cullen set a report on recent developments in Orlais aside and dipped his pen in the half-filled inkwell. The parchment he’d been working on was now about three-quarters full of his own cramped handwriting, notes and abbreviations and questions that he would have to ask in the next few days. Flickering candlelight that guttered erratically in the sharp little breezes that cut into his study through the arrow-slit windows.

He underlined a sentence twice and then reached for the next report or dispatch or _something_ \-- and his hand touched bare wood instead.

He blinked, and rubbed his hand over his eyes, and looked at his desk again.

The remains of a bowl of cold stew, which he did not remember consuming. A stack of documents that he’d already finished reviewing, and his sheet of notes, his pen and his inkwell. Bits of various ores, a handful of fist-sized pieces, which he used for paperweights -- and nothing left that he hadn’t already read.

“I’m imagining things,” he said, quietly, and then he got to his feet. Brief bout of blazing spots of light in his eyes. Dizziness and nausea -- more withdrawal symptoms, so what else was new -- and he braced himself over his desk, trying to breathe.

A sharp hint of snow in the air, when he exited his study. He returned the salute from the guard on the battlements. “If you have the latest reports, hand them over.”

“Ser?” the man asked. “There -- there haven’t been any. And I’ve just been to, ah, Sister Leliana’s quarters. There are no new reports for you.”

“Carry on,” Cullen said, and retreated to his desk in confusion.

From the brief glimpse he’d had of the sky, it was _hours_ yet till dinner.

“Maker,” he said, quietly. Free time. What a strange concept. 

He glanced up the ladder -- he could sleep, but then -- _she_ wouldn’t be there.

He didn’t feel like sleeping on the sheets that still smelled like Kiriya, salt and lavender and that faint hint of the oil that she used to sharpen her knives -- he’d only miss her more.

A glance around his quarters. No point in tidying things when there wasn’t much out of place.

In the end he pried his throwing knives out of the practice dummy that he kept in a corner of the office and went down to the practice yards. He breathed in the fresh air, and sent up a quiet prayer of thanks that his nausea seemed to abate quickly.

“Fancy seeing you out here in the open air,” said a familiar voice, floating down to him from above.

“I know, I haven’t gotten over the shock yet,” he said, raising an eyebrow at Varric’s half-moon-shaped glasses. 

“You actually managed to do something about your paperwork?”

“Either that or _someone_ is holding out on me, and -- oh look, I have knives, I can do a quick bit of disemboweling before I go and have dinner.”

Varric made a face at him once they were standing next to each other. “Ugh. What strange ideas you have. How about a drink or two instead? I’ll even buy the first round.”

Cullen looked between his knives and the ink stains on Varric’s sturdy hands, and shrugged. “I was going to practice with my knives -- ”

“I can see that -- ”

“But I have to admit your idea sounds better than mine.”

Varric chuckled. “Knew I’d get to you someday, Curly.”

Cullen snorted -- but once he was sitting in one of the upstairs booths in the Herald’s Rest, with his second mug of beer next to his hand, he had to sigh and slump back comfortably.

“Never thought I’d see you, you know, not quite sitting up straight like someone stuck a stick up the back of your armor.”

“I should be thankful that that didn’t go anywhere you would regret,” Cullen said, gulping down another mouthful.

Varric snorted and poured himself another glass of dark red wine -- then drank from it, and stuck out his tongue. “Bad. But nothing like the swill we used to drink in Kirkwall -- ”

Cullen made a disgusted face. The beer and the free hours were clearing his head, and all he could say was, “I’ll never understand why people drink that stuff. Burns going down.”

“What can I say, I like drinking things that could possibly kill me.” Varric coughed and took off his glasses, making them vanish into a pocket that Cullen couldn’t see. “It really _is_ a surprise seeing you.”

“In what sense?”

“Well, out of the Templar armor for starters.”

“Andraste willing, I’ll never put that on again.” Cullen drained his mug, and wiped the foam away from his face, and told himself that Varric was not looking at him with sympathy.

Clattering footsteps, then, in the courtyard below, and a voice calling: “Commander!”

He exchanged glances with Varric, then opened the window and answered. “What news?”

“The Inquisitor’s party has been spotted, and they should be here in the next few hours.”

“Thank you,” Cullen called.

“That took a while,” Varric said as he dropped a few coins onto the table. “I hope she’s all right.”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

“I can tell you want to go -- don’t let me keep you.”

He stretched a hand out, first. “I wanted to thank you. For this.”

Varric shrugged and shook his hand. “Now you owe me.”

Cullen snorted. “That was obvious. As long as it’s nothing too ridiculous -- ”

“I know, I know, you’ve got your image to work on, same as I do.” A sly smile. “Just remember I’ll collect. Someday.”

Cullen nodded, and hurried out, a list already forming in his mind. Up and down staircases. The quietly intense cawing of the messenger birds in the rookery, and the weight of an empty wooden tub. A basket of potions and bandages. A blanket from his own quarters.

And when the gates of Skyhold finally cracked open on a ragged Kiriya and her equally ragged companions, Cullen was only the first person to reach her, catching her as she slipped awkwardly off her horse.

Only the long years of keeping his emotions from his face allowed him to say nothing about the shadows under her eyes, the bruises on every inch of exposed skin, the alarming lightness of her. 

“Cullen.” Cassandra was walking with only a slight limp. “I’ll come up to the War Table with you. We’ll have to wake Kiriya up for some of the details, but I believe I can tell the tale adequately enough.”

“What happened?”

“Better to tell it all just the once,” the Seeker sighed.

Cullen gritted his teeth and followed a scowling Leliana and a worried Josephine up the stairs, and he nodded when Cassandra found a chair to help prop the Inquisitor up.

Kiriya groaned, softly, and opened her eyes. “Ah -- I don’t recall walking up here,” she said, her words slightly slurred.

“Cullen carried you,” Josephine said.

Dark brown eyes blinked up at him, bloodshot. “Thank you.”

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Crestwood,” Cassandra prompted, gently.

“Right,” Kiriya said. “The rift that was reported there is closed and now we have to find the Mayor -- Leliana, perhaps I could ask you for some assistance with that -- ”

A tight nod. “I’ll have my agents inquire.”

Cassandra took up the thread from there. Corpses rising and Caer Bronach and a change in the weather. “I recommend garrisoning the old fort as soon as it’s possible,” she said.

“I’ll take care of it,” Cullen told her.

“And that is all I have to say.”

Kiriya stirred, and said, “You forgot -- you forgot the thing.”

“Thing?” Leliana asked.

“There’s a reason I came back looking like this,” Kiriya said, faintly. “We -- we fought a dragon. A Northern Hunter. It was going to attack the village. Couldn’t let that happen.” A cough of a laugh. “It’s dead now. Don’t have to worry about it.”

“So we will worry about you, instead,” Josephine said. “Inquisitor, you need to be looked after -- if there is nothing else that is pressing, I suggest that we reconvene tomorrow.”

“All right,” and then Kiriya attempted to rise -- and Cullen caught her by the hand, by the small of her back, as she swayed, visibly.

“You will take care of her,” Cassandra told him, something of an order about the words, and Cullen gave her a tight nod.

“You’re worried,” Kiriya whispered as he ushered her out into the corridor.

“Maybe a little,” Cullen said, anxiously watching her every movement.

“Lying.”

“Yes.” Once they were out of sight of the War Room he lifted her into his arms. “Faster this way.”

He thought he heard her whisper, “Missed you,” as he carried her into her rooms.

“Can you take your clothes off?” he asked, still whispering.

“Too tired.” But Kiriya put her arms around his neck and pulled him down a little, enough so that she could kiss him on his cheek.

Despite himself he kissed her back -- soft and chaste, a brief peck on her lips. Maker, how he’d missed her. 

“I smell a bath,” Kiriya said.

“I ordered one as soon as you were spotted.”

“Thank you.” And she slipped out of his arms, staggered over to the wooden tub. He watched her peel off her clothes, slow and unsteady, and he gritted his teeth again as he saw the full extent of her injuries. Olive skin and wiry muscles and a handful of old scars -- some darker and some lighter -- and now dirt and old blood crusted stiff, clinging to her.

He took off his armor and locked the door, and fetched the bandages that he’d had placed next to her dresser. 

“Help me?” Kiriya said, and he helped her wash her hair, helped her scrub away the dust and the smells of the road, helped her drink some of the healing potions.

Finally he watched her rinse the suds from her face and then, bracing herself against the wooden tub, rise painfully to her feet.

As he wrapped a soft towel around her she pulled him in for another kiss, sighing softly against his mouth. “I have something for you,” she whispered. “Go look in my pack -- look for the torn sleeve.”

“Let me get you to bed first,” Cullen said, and the last time he’d tucked anyone into bed was -- Branson? Rosalie? He couldn’t quite remember, and he cursed the years and the lyrium -- and he must have been clumsy when he was only trying not to jar Kiriya, but somehow she had a smile for him as she settled into the pillows.

He could take care of the tub and the water in it later -- and he would have to remember to have some food brought up -- but first, because she’d asked him, he looked in her rucksack. Clothes and one small parcel of dried fruit, several bunches of elfroot.

A piece of her torn sleeve. There was something tough within, something small -- iridescent blue, smooth on one side and rough on the other. Vaguely four-cornered.

A scale from a dragon, from the Northern Hunter Kiriya’d fought. 

Maybe he had something that he could give her in return.

He wrapped the dragon scale up again and put it next to his armor, and crossed back to the bed. He smoothed curls of damp hair from Kiriya’s forehead. In the morning she’d complain about unruly waves, and likely contemplate cutting her hair short again -- he would have to dissuade her or distract her, and he finally managed to smile, a little. 

She was whispering. He thought he heard his name. Her hand seeking him out, restless -- a frown forming on her brow --

He bent to her and kissed her cheek, and she calmed, and turned over, so that was she was facing him.

She was here. She was home. She was safe.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) and my Dragon Age: Inquisition blog is [here](http://ninemoons42-inquisition.tumblr.com/).


End file.
